Down the Potomac

I thought that I’d do a bit of narration instead of just pictures.

We have started down the Potomac, at night. The tide had turned at 9 PM and rather than loose this free ride we decided to start a bit earlier than expected. The ride out of Washington was filled with the lights of the city and the sights of the landing aircraft across the Potomac as we made our way south. There was no wind as we motored toward the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. There was though, one big “party” boat that must have had a wedding reception going for they were dancing away on the upper lounge to the beat of Michael Jackson’s “thriller”. As the night progressed the tide really kicked in and we had an extra 2 kts added to our motoring. By 2:30 in the morning the tide was about to turn so we dropped anchor in Mattawoman creek for the night.
(Anna used my picture but I'd planned to use it here in this Blog)

Up again at 7 AM to catch the next tide. My day was spent, again, motoring along and sitting on the “throne”. That’s a pile of cushions and the click chairs that get my eyes high enough so that I can see better over the bow of the Goose. All day long we motored down the river and even got to sail for a bit but the winds proved to be a bit too elusive and so we motored until night fall. About 12 miles from the mouth of the Potomac I again dropped anchor for a short night in Glebe creek as the tide wasn’t in our favor any more.

At 4 AM we were up again for the tide was again in our favor and we went sailing down the Potomac in the dark. The winds up and were making a good 7 kts. Night sailing on the river is a pleasant thing. Down by the mouth the river is deep, over a mile wide and at night there aren’t any power boats to toss you around with their wakes. The only drawback was when we rounded the point and started down the Chesapeake we had a head wind to contend with and a long motor to get back to Walden’s Marina in Deltaville. It’s going to rain for the next few days and we plan to sit it out there until the N/W wind fills in again.


The sunset made up for the rather horrid motoring that we did to get here. Tomorrow, more repairs and then we head south!